I Wish I Were Well
by Halcyon Days No More
Summary: In Honor of Gastroparesis Awareness Month Chronic illness is hard. Sometimes its nice to have someone in your corner. Cross-posted on AO3. Don't re-post without author's permission.


**Author's Note: Since August is gastroparesis awareness month I thought I'd explore an idea that hit me while working towards my own diagnosis with this disease the past several months.**

**It went something along the lines of: Great I'm turning into Aizawa (I dresses in baggy black clothing, love cats way too much and generally can't be bothered with my hair especially when I'm ill) All I need is the sleeping bag. I've already got the juice pouches... Wait what if he eats those because his stomach doesn't empty with solid food either?**

**And thus this was born.**

A God awful, gut churning heave sent even more strings of clear saliva and mucus to join the swirl of bright yellow bile already tinting the water of the toilet bowl as his already empty stomach rebelled once again.

Damn his dysfunctional stomach to the lowest reaches of Hell.

He'd taken the medications that kept his digestive system flowing in an at least somewhat properly functioning manor.

He was damn near religious about popping the vitamins and nutrient tablets that kept him from keeling over with a deficiency.

He hydrated.

And he hadn't so much as touched solid food in years.

He'd learned to subsist off fruit purees, juices, and rice porridge. Even though his taste buds _ached_ for a proper mean. Warm and bursting with flavor that his paralyzed stomach would not tolerate anymore.

And still he was plagued with days – sometimes weeks – where all he could do was attempt to keep hydrated as his stomach refused to tolerate anything more substantial than watered down electrolyte mix.

You could last three weeks without eating. But you wouldn't even make three days with every bit of fluid in your body either running through you like water through a sieve or coming back up before you even got it swallowed good.

"Here," said a quiet voice.

And a moment later a blessedly cool cloth is draped across his burning neck.

He just managed a grunt of thanks. Luckily Hizashi's always been good at reading him, because when he speaks again it's to say:

"No problem."

There's a faint rattle behind him. Followed by the distinctive pop of a medicine bottle's childproof cap being removed.

"Here," says Hizashi, handing over a familiar white tablet. "It's your backup anti-nausea med," he adds unnecessarily.

A trembling hand excepts the tablet and raises it up to his mouth so that he can slip it underneath his tongue.

As the pill dissolves an arid, almost metallic taste floods his mouth to join the bile laced sourness that had already been lingering there.

"Thanks, 'Zashi," he manages aloud this time.

His back up medicine takes the worst of the edge off. Leaving him feeling vaguely queasy rather than liable to spill the nonexistent contents of his stomach at a moment's notice.

Still he's weak as a day-old kitten as his husband pours him into bed and tugs the comforter to just up under his chin.

The cool cloth from the bathroom is still around his neck. He can feel it dampening his pillow, but can't bring himself to care. The chill of it is easing his stomach and that's all he can bring himself to care about at this point.

He feels the side of the bed dip as his husband sits down beside him. A moment later he's leaning into the soothing sensation that is the other man's long, slender fingers carding through his hair.

"You're sure I shouldn't call Recovery Girl?" Hizashi asks fretfully, even though he well knows Aizawa's answer at this point.

"No point," he grunts. Not unless he gets so dehydrated that he starts getting out of his head.

Gastroparesis isn't something Recovery Girl can kiss better. The Youthful Heroine's Quirk allowed her to encourage the body to speed up its own healing at the cost of some lost stamina.

There was nothing to heal, therefore there was nothing for her Quirk to work on.

Maybe – years ago – if she'd been on call at the hospital he'd been wheeled into after a villain had gotten in a lucky strike at his abdomen with a well-placed knife – things might have gone differently. The vagus nerve in his abdomen might have still been damaged, but it might have had a better chance of actually healing properly as well.

As it was, he'd made it through surgery fine. The next day he'd even been up and around to the consternation of his doctors. Then, less than a week later, he'd thought he'd caught the lasts round of stomach flu that had been making its way through his neighborhood.

It hadn't been the stomach flu.

Stomach flu didn't last for three months.

Three long months of endless nausea and vomiting – of test after test – as his doctors tried and failed to figure out what the hell was wrong with him.

"It's probably your gallbladder," one doctor had said, when he'd described the sharp stabbing pain and deep ache that just wouldn't leave his right side.

"If it was your appendix it would have burst by now," said an unhelpful ER nurse as he was wheeled back to triage for yet another round of fluids after he'd collapsed from dehydration.

But his gallbladder was fine. Functioning at one hundred percent if the HIDA scan he'd and to endure was anything to go by.

Next up had been a Gastric Emptying Test, which had been just as unpleasant as the name suggested. For the second time in as many weeks a radioactive isotype had been introduced to his system. This time, not through an IV, but instead mixed in with the eggiest smelling eggs he'd ever had the misfortune of having to endure.

Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to shove something that stank of sulfur under the nose of someone trying their hardest not to vomit bile all over the place? Especially when they'd been denied anti-nausea meds for the past several hours because they would invalidate the test if taken?

A complete moron was who in Aizawa's opinion.

The GET should have been the end of it all. It should have shown that his stomach was as sluggish as Hizashi's brain of a mornings before his first cup of coffee, but it hadn't.

And so, he'd been left with the ominous words from his doctor that perhaps they should start seeking answers elsewhere.

"Has your vision been off at all?" the doctor had asked. "I had a patient before who presented with persistent nausea and it ended up being glaucoma…."

_Fuck, not his eyes_, he'd thought. _Not the source of his Quirk_.

"Or," the doctor went on, "It could be that there is fluid or something pressing on the nausea center in your brain…. In any case, we'll try a CT scan with contrast of your whole abdomen to rule out any issues with your intestines – as well as any complication we could have missed from your stabbing a few months ago – but it might just be time to contact your normal optometrist as well as a neurologist."

But his eyes were fine and the neurologist hadn't been necessary. The final image of the CT scan had revealed all in the form of contrast pooling around his stomach like a stagnant pond.

What had followed where prescriptions of pills to treat both nausea and to help his stomach do its damn job. As well as endless reading about and logging of what he could and couldn't eat.

The discovery of puree pouches by Hizashi had been a Godsent.

Sure, the texture was more or less all he same, but the flavors were different. And at that point he was thoroughly sick of eating okayu.

Nowadays his illness was usually manageable. A combination of medication and careful diet let him function more or less like anyone else. But still there were flareups and Bad Days. Usually when he was tempted and looked at a food from the Never-In-Hell list the wrong way.

Hizashi was a freaking saint on his Bad Days. Endlessly patient with him. Willing to set aside his own squeamishness to fetch and carry cool compresses, meds, and fluids while he lost the meager contents of his stomach.

_Still_, he thought, the fingers carding though his hair coupled with the exhaustion of being ill lulling him into a light doze. _It would be nice if this would go into remission. I still miss eating._


End file.
